The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000

同性恋色情建立的欧洲，1945 年至 2000 年

• 批准号: AH/X004686/1
• 负责人: John Mercer
• 金额: $ 107.27万
• 依托单位: Birmingham City University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX004686%2F1
• 关键词: Europe; Gay; Porn; Built; 1945

How did the growing transnational circulation of gay male erotica and porn magazines in postwar Europe contribute to the development of a shared identity and sense of belonging among European gay men? How did this form of erotic citizenship echo or complicate narratives of cosmopolitanism, human rights, equality, social justice, and pluralism that were being associated with the parallel project of European integration and citizenship?While the existence of Europe has been evident to those who inhabit it for centuries, its definition by positive means is a more recent phenomenon. Originally known by what it was not, "Europe" eventually came to be defined by what it was thought to actually be. At the core of that positive refashioning of "Europe" was the developing belief in a common "European" history and political identity retroactively mapped back to the origin myth of "Greece." As a response to the legacies of European nationalisms and two world wars, the commonalities attributed to European peoples gained political momentum. They were alluded to and publicly deployed by the ideologues of European integration, who sought out means through which to imagine a European commons. Today's European hegemony is thus anchored in four myths of origin: a legal system heir to Roman law, a social ethos of solidarity grounded on Christian and humanist legacies, a recognition of individual rights and freedoms, and a universalism derived from Enlightenment principles of reason, universalism, and cosmopolitanism. It was in relation to those values and principles of postwar "Europe" that the gay movement would also come to define itself. Fuelled by rural-to-urban and transnational movements of people triggered by WWII and its aftermath, as well as by a growing "lifestyle" consumer culture, gay men eventually started to perceive themselves as members of an oppressed minority and come together as a transnational political constituency. As recent studies have shown, central to the coalescence of the movement around liberal universalism was its transnational coordination by means of media exchanges among gay men at local, national, and supranational levels. Those studies, however, have privileged activist organisations, their relationships with national and supranational European political institutions, and their media networks, despite the fact that media scholars have convincingly argued that it was erotica and porn, and not activist media, that managed to reach the largest numbers of gay men across extensive geographies, ultimately connecting them and allowing them to imagine a community of which they were part.To address that scholarly gap, "The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000" will map for the first time the European networks of production, circulation and consumption of gay erotica and porn magazines published between the end of WWII and the turn of the 21st century, and build on them to develop a cultural study of "Europe" as imagined by gay men. We will do so in three key innovative ways: (1) by exploring how the gay sexual imaginary mediated by print gay porn cultures will have catalysed new and likely conflicting ways for gay men across Europe to imagine both one another and their non-European others. (2) by investigating the resonances and dissonances within and between that pan-European gay sexual imaginary and the Europeanist imaginary being advanced by political institutions. (3) by focusing on the erotics of "homoeuropeanism" to interrogate what we talk (or don't talk) about when we talk about "Europe." At a time when nationalisms and euro-scepticism is gaining political momentum across the continent, the project will offer a new important vantage point from where to think "Europe" through unveiling how the latter was imagined and erotically iterated by a minoritised community that would eventually be embraced by European institutions themselves as a way of defining the exceptionality of Europe against its others.

在战后的欧洲，男同性恋色情和色情杂志的跨国发行量的增长如何促进了欧洲男同性恋者共同身份和归属感的发展？这种形式的色情公民身份是如何回应或复杂化与欧洲一体化和公民身份平行项目相关的世界主义、人权、平等、社会正义和多元主义的叙述的？虽然欧洲的存在对于那些居住在欧洲的人来说已经是显而易见的了，但用积极的方式来定义它是一个更近的现象。“欧洲”一开始是由它不是什么来定义的，但最终却由它被认为实际上是什么来定义。对“欧洲”的积极重塑的核心是对共同的“欧洲”历史和政治认同的信仰的发展，这种信仰追溯到“希腊”的起源神话。“作为对欧洲民族主义和两次世界大战遗留问题的回应，欧洲各国人民的共同点获得了政治动力。欧洲一体化的理论家们间接地提到并公开部署了这些措施，他们寻求通过这些措施来想象一个欧洲公地。因此，今天的欧洲霸权植根于四个起源神话：继承罗马法的法律的体系、基于基督教和人文主义遗产的团结的社会精神、对个人权利和自由的承认，以及源自启蒙运动理性、普遍主义和世界主义原则的普遍主义。同性恋运动也是在与战后“欧洲”的价值观和原则有关的情况下来定义自己的。在第二次世界大战及其后果引发的农村到城市和跨国人口流动以及日益增长的“生活方式”消费文化的推动下，男同性恋者最终开始将自己视为受压迫的少数群体的成员，并作为一个跨国政治选区走到一起。最近的研究表明，围绕自由主义普遍主义的运动的核心是通过地方、国家和超国家层面的同性恋者之间的媒体交流进行跨国协调。这些研究，然而，有特权活动家组织，他们与国家和超国家的欧洲政治机构的关系，以及他们的媒体网络，尽管事实上，媒体学者令人信服地认为，这是色情和色情，而不是活动家媒体，设法达到最大数量的男同性恋者在广泛的地理位置，最终将他们联系起来，让他们想象一个他们是其中一部分的社区。为了解决这一学术空白，《同性恋色情作品建造的欧洲，1945-2000》将首次绘制欧洲的生产网络，本研究以二次世界大战末期至二世纪之交出版的同性恋情色与色情杂志的发行与消费为研究对象，并以此为基础，发展出一个关于男同性恋者所想像的“欧洲”的文化研究。我们将通过三种关键的创新方式来实现这一点：（1）通过探索印刷版同性恋色情文化所介导的同性恋性想象如何催化欧洲各地的同性恋男性以新的、可能相互冲突的方式来想象彼此和他们的非欧洲其他人。(2)通过调查泛欧洲同性恋性想象和欧洲主义者的想象之间的共鸣和不和谐，被政治机构所推动。(3)通过关注“同性恋欧洲主义”的情色来质问我们在谈论“欧洲”时谈论（或不谈论）什么。在民族主义和欧洲怀疑主义在整个欧洲大陆获得政治动力的时候，该项目将提供一个新的重要Vantage位置，从哪里思考“欧洲”，通过揭示后者是如何被少数群体想象和色情迭代的，最终将被欧洲机构本身接受，作为定义欧洲相对于其他国家的特殊性的一种方式。